Eulogy of Abraham Lincoln : before the General Assembly of Connecticut, at Allyn Hall, Hartford, Thursday, June 8th, 1865

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EULOGY

OP

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

BY

HENRY CHAMPION DEMING,

BEFORE THE

GENEKAL ASSEMBLY OF CONNECTICUT,

AT

ALLYN HALL, HARTFORD, THURSDAY, JUNE 8tli, 1865.

HARTFORD:

A. N. CLARK & CO., STATE PRINTERS.

1865.

Digitized by the Internet Arclnive

in 2010 witln funding from

The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant

http://www.archive.org/details/eulogyofabrahamlOOindemi

COMMITTEE ON DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Hon. Mr. Harrison.
Messrs. Pratt of Norwich,
Oaklet of Bristol,
Merritt of Greenwich,
Payne of North Haven,
Amsburt of Killingly,
Hart of Cornwall,
HuNGERFORD of East Haddam,
Paine of Woodstock. ■

General Assembly,

May Session, A. D. 1865.

Resolved, That the thanks of this General Assembly are hereby
tendered to the Hon. Henry C. Deming, for his able, eloquent
and patriotic Address on the life and character of ABRAHAM
LINCOLN.

Resolved, That thirty-five hundred copies of said address be
printed for the use of this Assembly.

In Senate, June 9th, 1865.
Passed.

WM. T. ELMER, Clerh

House of Representatives, June 9th, 1865.
Passed.

JOHN R. BUCK, Clerh.

EULOGY.

By authority of a joint resolution, the Select Com-
mittee on the Death of President Lincoln, invited
the Hon. Henry Champion Deming, of Hartford,
Member of Congress from the First District, to de-
liver before the General Assembly a eulogy upon the
life, character and services of the lamented Presi-
dent.

The invitation was accepted by the honorable
gentleman, and the eulogy was delivered at AUyn
Hall, in the city of Hartford, on the evening of
June 8th, 1865.

The Hall was festooned with flags and mourning,
and music was furnished by Colt's Band.

The meeting was called to order by Hon. H.
Lynde Harrison, Senator from the Sixth District,
who announced the following officers :

PRESIDENT.
His Excellency, WM. A. BUCKINGHAM.

VICE-PRESIDENTS.

( On the part of the Senate.)
Hon. Roger Averill, President, Hon. Samuel Rockwell,
" Edward I. Sandford, " Sylvester Smith,

" Charles H. Mallory, " John T. Waite,

6

Hon. Benjamin Pomeroy,

Hon. Charles W. Ballard,

" Edwin H. Bugbee,

" Orlando J. Hodge,

" Hrnrt W. Peck,

" Bobbins Battell,

" William E. Cone,

" Jasper H. Bolton,

Hon. Charles A. Atkins.

(On tht

par

t of the House.)

Hon. E. K. Foster, Speaker,

Mr. Henry B. Harrison,

Mr H. K. W. Welch,

" John S. Rice,

" Franklin Chamberlin,

" Harris B. Munson,

" Oliver S. Williams,

" Frederick J. Kingsbury,

" Rial Chanet,

" Samuel Mowry,

" Charles W. Scott,

" David P. Nichols,

" Phineas T. Barnom,

" Myron L. Mason,

" Samuel G. Beardsley,

" Edward L. Cundall,

" Henry Hammond,

" David Gallup,

" Charles Osgood,

" David E. Bostwick,

" Abijah Catlin,

" Andrew B. Mygatt,

" Henry S. Barbour,

" William G. Coe,

" Luther Boaedman,

" William R. Clark,

" George Kellogg,

" Julius Converse.

SECRRTARIES,

(On the

part of the Senate.)

Hon. Frederick W. Russell,

Hon. Francis A. Sanford.

(On the

part

of the House )

Mr. Samuel J. Day,

Mr. Edward S. Scranton,

' " Alonzo F. Wood,

" Albert L. Avery,

" F. St. John Lockwood,

" Afollos Comstock,

" Oscar Tourtelottf,

" LuciAN Carpenter,

" George M. Woodruff,

" Lewis Catlin,

" John M. Douglas,

" George D. Hastings.

On taking l%e chair, Governor Buckingham was
loudly applauded. He said :

Ladies and Gentlemen : —

It is difficult for us to review the past and con-
template the rapid and marvelous changes which
have crowded the events of generations into a few
passing months, without inquiring whether it all has
not been a dream ; and yet our minds and hands
have been so much occupied, and our hearts so
deeply affected by the scenes through which we
have passed, that our judgment and consciousness
decide the question, and assure us that we have not
been moved by visions and dreams, but by realities.

The rebellion has been a reality. The power of
the government has not been imaginary. The
organization of armies, their conflict upon a thou-
sand battle-fields, the overthrow of our national ene-
mies, the suj)pression of the rebellion, and the
emancipation of the enslaved, are all real events,
which have surprised ourselves and astonished the
civilized world. But events alone do not make
history. It is read in the character and lives of
those who have been active participators in the
scenes which have transpired. There can be no
correct history of the Israelites, of their oppression
and deliverence, of their passage through the sea
and through the wilderness, without the lives of

8

Moses and Joshua. There can be no true history of
the twenty-five years of European war, commencing
with the French revolution and ending with the
battle of Waterloo, without the life of Napoleon.
Nor can there be a correct history of this nation, as
it has passed through this great struggle for exist-
ence, without the life of Abraham Lincoln, and with-
out connecting his name with that immortal procla-
mation which gave freedom and manhood to four
millions of bondmen.

The General Assembly has properly invited a gen-
tleman of distinguished ability, who was intimately
acquainted with Mr. Lincoln, to present to us this
evening, and to weave into our nation's history, the
life and character of our late President, so that all
may see those qualities of heart and mind by which
he endeared himself to the people, and which stamped
his official acts with a purity and patriotism which
command universal respect and admiration. No
one can draw his character in lines of more distinct-
ness and accuracy, or present it in more attractive
and life-like colors, or show more clearly the precise
influence which he exerted over public affairs during
this period of danger, than the orator of the
evening, whom I now introduce — the Hon. Henry
C. Deming.

9

Mr. Deming was received with long continued
applause. He said :

May it please your Excellency, and Gentlemen of the
General Assembly : —

From the seat of our Republican Empire which,
during the last four years and for all coming time,
he has preserved from the spoiler by his wisdom and
address ; through avenues of weeping myriads who
have thronged the thoroughfare, all the way from
the Potomac to the prairie, to look on his bier,
bear his pall, and to scatter on his casket the fra-
grant offerings of affection ; through great common-
wealths which, with all the pomp and circumstance
of mournful state, have received him on their thresh-
old and attended him, with uncovered heads, and
with every oblation of sorrow from border to bor-
der ; through magnificent cities draped from cornice
to basement in all the emblems and wailing with
every motto and articulation of woe; to the sighing
of the air, over the groaning earth ; to the booming
of minute gun, to muffled drum and the plaintive
burst of martial music ; to dirge, anthem and lamen-
tation, Abraham Lincoln has reached that silent home
of all the living, which " buries every error, covers
every defect, extinguishes every resentment."

10

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well,
Treason has done his worst, nor steel nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further !

With ampler honors, and with more of the sym-
bols and ceremonial of universal love and veneration,
than this continent ever paid before to any of her
sons, the funeral pageant had scarcely reached the
portals of the tomb, before the posthumous tributes
of another Hemisphere are borne across the Ocean.
The suffering of her eldest born fairly melts into
sympathy the estranged heart of our haughty Island
Mother, and England mourns, as when Nelson ex-
pired in the arms of victory, or as when the gates
of her Great Abbey, closed upon the ashes of the
greatest of her warriors. The generous Queen
draws upon her own inconsolable domestic grief, for
consolation to a wife and mother, like herself be-
reaved, and pens with her own royal hand a letter of
condolence. The brazen lips of the impassive Empe-
ror break their grim silence to utter sententious pan-
egyric. From the mountains of Switzerland, which
have for centuries broken the waves of oppression, we
have free, generous, intelligent homage to a libera-
tor, whom William Tell would have been proud to
recognize as a brother. Ancient cities, which might
have wept, when at the base of Pompey's statue

11

great Caesar fell, have, by their representatives, hung
in all the trappings of grief the august Hall, wherein
they are now legislating for regenerated Italy. The
free towns and corporate guilds of Netherlands and
Germany, which wrung their charters from Charles
the Bold, and rocked European freedom in its cradle,
vie with each other in canonizino; a child of the
people, who leads the Great Republic from darkness
and bondage, to light and liberty. The Prussian
Cliamber of Deputies, receive with enthusiastic
applause, the eloquent eulogium of a personnl ac-
quaintance of the President, and affirm a most ear-
nest resolution of respect by unanimously rising
from their seats, in token of superlative courtesy,
and the Lower House of the Austrian Reichsrath
which conducts its stately proceedings, accordmg to
forms and usaares handed down from the Feudal
Ages, is as wild and demonstrative, upon the receipt
of the sad intelligence, as an Indignation Meeting of
Loyal Leagues in Union Square. Indeed, for Abra-
ham Lincoln one cry of universal regret is raised all
over the civilized earth.

It is difficult to descend from the fervor of these
first impassioned outbursts of a world wide grief, to
cool analysis and historic delineation. And yet that
is the task before me. I should violate the proprie-
ties of this occasion, if I indulged in mere rhapsodies.

12

however grand and well deserved, for I am to pre-
sent an estimate of character to a Legislative body,
and I can not forget that it habitually dwells in the
mild atmosphere congenial to deliberation, that it
solicits unvarnished statement instead of rhetorical
flourish, and records its own judgment in the com-
posed style of fact and argument.

In these days of photographs, it is almost super-
fluous to paint in speech the portrait of a distin-
guished man, but as the resources of the language
have been exhausted in depreciation of Mr. Lincoln's
person, I am unwilling that he shall pass into his-
tory, in any shape, which may repel the enthusiasm
due by posterity, to exalted merit and heroic achieve-
ment. Let us at all events place on record the im-
age which he really wore that he may not descend
the ages according to malicious caricature. Mr.
Lincoln's person was not one to move their applause,
to whom an Apollo or an Antinous are the only
ideals of physical humanity, or whose undeviating
types of manliness are found on the canvas of a
Eeynolds or a Stuart, but it was not uninteresting
for those to contemplate who regard the human form
and. face, as a veritable record of life's experiences,
and to some extent, an index of character. It was
not unsuited to one who was born from a rude stock,
in a wild forest, and was nurtured and moulded by

13

constant warfare, with wilderness life, and iron for-
tune, and frontier hardships. Conceive a tall and
gaunt figure, more than six feet in height, not only
unencumbered with superfluous flesh, but reduced
to the minimum working standard of cord, and sinew,
and muscle, strong and indurated by exposure and
toil, with legs and arms long and attenuated, but
not disproportionately so to the long and attenuated
trunk ; in posture and carriage not ungraceful, but
with the grace of unstudied and careless ease, rather
than of cultivated airs and high-bred pretensions.
His dress is uniformly of black throughout, and
would attract but little attention in a well dressed
circle, if it hung less loosely upon him and the
ample white shirt collar was not turned over his
cravat in the western style. The face that sur-
mounts this figure is half Eoman and half Indian,
bronzed by climate, furrowed by life struggles,
seamed with humor, the head is massive and covered
with dark, thick and unmanageable hair, the brow
is wide and well developed, the nose large and
fleshy, the lips full, cheeks thin, and drawn down in
strong corded lines, which, but for the wiry whiskers,
would disclose the machinery which moves the broad
jaw. The eyes are dark gray, sunk in deep sockets,
but bright, soft and beautiful in expression, and
sometimes lost and half abstracted, as if their glance

14

was reversed and turued inward, or as if the soul
which hghted them was far away. The teeth are
white and regular, and it is only when a smile, radi-
ant, captivating and winning as was ever given to
mortal, transfigures the plain countenance, that you
begin to realize that it is not impossible for artists to
admire and woman to love it.

As the world has rung with ridicule of the ungain-
liness of his manners, I may be permitted to say, that
without any pretensions to superfine polish, they
were frank, cordial, and dignified, without rudeness,
without offence, and without any violation of the
proprieties and etiquettes of his high position. As
fastidious and keen a master of such nice matters as
Mr. Everett has said, "I recognize in the President, a
full measure of the qualities which entitle him to the
personal respect of the people. On the only social
occasion on which I ever had the honor to be in his
company, viz : the Commemoration at Gettysburg,
he sat at the table at the house of my friend David
Willis, Esq., by tlie side of several distinguished per-
sons, ladies and gentlemen, foreigners and Americans,
among them the French Minister at Washington,
since appointed French Ambassador at Madrid, and
the Admiral of the French Fleet, and that in gentle-
manly appearance, manners and conversation he was
the peer of any man at the table."

15

To borrow one of his own conversational phrases
he did'nt brag on deportment. He was not a Tur-
veydrop or Sir Harcoiirt Courtly or General Banks.
It would have puzzled him to stand in tableau for the
Earl of Chatham, or the Pompeian Ajax. He was
not proud of his leg, like President Dwight, nor was
he a George the Fourth at a bow. He stood, and
moved, and bowed, without affectation, and without
obtrusive awkwardness, pretty much as nature
prompted, and as if he regarded carnage as about as
bad a criterion as color of genuine nobility of soul.
He was not overcareful of his dignity, feeling assured
that his dignity could take care of itself, and consent-
ing to rend the web of official formalities, and to
waive all ceremony and precedence which might bar
his passage to a good deed by the most expeditious
route. He has been convicted in contempt of " the
divinity which doth hedge a king," of conferring with
his counsellors in a great emergency, and of perform-
ing an act of kindness and mercy, enveloped in no
robe of state but a cotton nightgown of scanty pat-
tern, and on one memorable occasion he even pre-
sumed to solve an enigma, raised in a congress of
ambassadors, by the little story of " root hog or die."
He was what Dr. Johnson calls a thoroughly "club-
bable" man, eminently social and familiar ; in private
interviews and sometimes in public, overflowing with

16

illustrations of every theme, always apt and racy,
and frequently humorous, with a habit like the Doc-
tor himself, of upsetting a pedantry or a sophism by
an epigram or an anecdote, and with a story telling
method of reasoning like our own Doctor Franklin.
While unrivaled as a raconteur in the pith and variety
of his store, he was not half so broad in his narratives
as many an assuming Chesterfield on both sides of
the water. It is the weak invention of false friends
and open enemies, to lay at his door all the prurient
jokes which their foul imaginations conceived and to
falsely asseverate that he was in the habit of indulg-
ing in unseemly jest and repartee on grave and sol-
emn occasions. I can adopt and endorse the precise
language of Mr. F. B. Carpenter, who as an artist had
free access to Mr. Lincoln's presence, and was for
several months an inmate of the White House, when
he says, " I feel that it is due to Mr. Lincoln's mem-
ory to state, that during my residence in Washing-
ton, after witnessing his intercourse with all classes
of people, including Governors, Senators, Members
of Congress, Officers of the Army and familiar friends,
I can not recollect to have heard him relate a cir-
cumstance to any one of them all that would have
been out of place if uttered in a lady's drawing room.
I am aware that a different impression may prevail,
founded it may be in some instances on facts, but

ir

where there is one fact of the kind, I am persuaded
that there are forty falsehoods at least."

Of his intellectual capacity, Mr. Lincoln gave the
most signal proof, in that memorable contest with
Judge Douglas, and his speeches are in no sense infe-
rior to his rivals — the Charles James Fox of our forum,
by universal consent the most athletic and expert ofiP-
hand debater who ever graced the United States
Senate. The President's mind was so original and
self dependent, so unwilling to borrow knowledge
and opinion, that he fairly scorned all adventitious
support and external auxiliaries. No President ever
leaned so lightly upon his Cabinet. No man repro-
duces less in official documents, the argument and
thought which he imbibes at consultations, and it is
a marvelous fact that no sentence is to be found in
any of his state papers, which suggests the suspicion
of any other impress but that of his own mint, or
where he attempts to strengthen or vindicate a posi-
tion, by quoting from any book or citing any author-
ity. And his greatness, his greatness! is the most
original and bizarre in the world's history, shaped
after no model, suggesting as a compact whole no
pattern, no parallel — not even a resemblance, con-
travening every antique and modern standard of
Hero-worship, — a greatness which admits of no exact
analysis and can only be loosely described as com-
2

18

posed of great simplicity, great naturalness, great
bonhomie, great shrewdness, great strength, great
devotion, great equanimity, and great success, on the
greatest theatre ever offered to such qualities for
exhibition. He appears like an erratic streaming
comet amid the fixed orbs of greatness, a fiery
meteor plunging and howling through their subdued
and chastened atmosphere. Ennobled by no patent
but that of nature, with no diploma but his record;
crowned, as it were, with the wild flowers of the
forest and with all its flavor and freshness upon him,
he walks into the surprised Pantheon of the world's
great men, a huge, grotesque Backwoodsman, but
with credentials to admission which can not be chal-
lenged or disallowed ; like the hirsute and half naked
Brennus striding into the grave and reverend deco-
rums of a Roman Senate; like Hans Luther's plebeian
and beetle-browed son confronting the stoled, mitered
and ermined Diet of Charles the Fifth ; like a red-
nosed, cropped and mail-clad Cromwell shuffling
through the silken splendors, the Vandyke dresses,
the perfumed love-locks, and the fastidious etiquette
of outraged Whitehall ; like St. Artegans' iron soldier
marching, with his invincible flail, into the startled
and shrinking ranks of vulnerable and pain suffering
warriors. It may be said of him, as has been said of
another indigenous American type of manliness, that

19

he taught the world " a new idea of greatness." It
is somewhat surprising that with all his superabun-
dance of wit and humor, he was but frugally endowed
with imagination and fancy, without wing for the air,
with not even enough like the ostrich to aid him
along the earth. He never uses a figure of speech to
decorate or enliven his style, and but seldom for the
purpose of illustrating a thought or exposing a fallacy-
He contemned all the elegancies of diction, using
only plain homespun English, aiming at direct and
compact statement in the fewest words, and those
sometimes chosen with more respect to convenience
than precision.

His education was self-acquired and unpretending
and, in the department of History, wherein the Past
by experience and example instructs and exhorts
the Present, and therefore so essential to genuine
statesmanship, it was somewhat narrow and defect-
ive. It must be constantly borne in mind, that a
superlative kindness and a disposition to oblige every
body, were fairly autocratic in him, sometimes hold-
ing in complete subjection all the other powers and
forces of his nature, and frequently controlling, against
their protest, his opinions and actions. "I have never
willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom," is the
accurate description which he gives of himself The
domination of this amiable disposition must be con-

20

»
stantly remembered, and carried along with you into

the development and estimate of his public career,

which I am attempting to present.

The chief mental equipments which he brought to
the mighty task before him, were that downright
uncompromising common sense which seems to divine
its way through the most intricate problems, a keen
insight into human nature, an intimate acquaintance
with the spasmodic movements of the American
mind, a natural aptitude, improved by professional
discipline, in chaining premise to conclusion, and in
detecting the occult relations of political cause to
political effect, great caution in forming opinions,
honesty and sincerity of purpose, inflexible persist-
ence in what he regarded as public duty, and a con-
scientious sense of his responsibility to the country
and to mankind. He had a temper habitually cheer-
ful, but not, as some have falsely assumed, inflexibly
so, for in my brief acquaintance with it, I have seen
it wear every shade from exultation to despair.
Laughter in abundance was in him but tears were
also there. To these characteristics should always
be added, an intuitive comprehension of the precise
line which divides Right from Wrong, and implicit
reliance upon the goodness and wisdom of Almighty
God.

Let us now see how this peculiar organization

21

addressed itself to the tremendous task which he has
just triumphantly achieved. And what a creative
task it was ? Armies, navies, cash, credit, opinion, all
to be created, heroism to be evolved from money-
making thrift, pluck from pusilanimity, steadfast
principle from vacillating expediency, constancy and
endurance from over-sanguine and vain-glorious
dreams — and millions of self-willed and arrogant
despots to be humbled forever. He began by almost
re-creating himself

In one of the brief speeches which Abrahmi Lin-
coln made, when as President elect, and in the full
flush of life, he traveled the same road upon which
he has recently returned, in the habiliments of the
grave, he says to his countrymen: "In my view of
the present aspect of affairs, there need be no blood-
shed or war. There is no necessity for it. I am not
in favor of such a course, and 1 may say in advance
that there will be no bloodshed unless it be forced
upon the government, and then it will be compelled
to act in self-defence." This brief sentence furnishes
us with the first insight into his mind, when contem-
plating the task before him, and it unlocks all the
mystery and explains the purely defensive course of
his administration, during the first two months of its
existence.

At the same time Jefferson Davis, on his progress

22

to Montgomery, to install a hostile government, thus
proclaims his setiments: — " The time for compromise
has passed, and we are now determined to maintain
our position, and make all who oppose us smell
southern gunpowder and feel southern steel." And
this short utterance epitomizes the spirit and temper
of the Chief Conspirator, when he was commencing
the despotic reign which has just been so ignomini-
ouslj closed by Col. Pritchard at Irwinsville. By the
light of events we now learn, what was not surmised
by the most sagacious at the time, that the Rebellion
was all armed, equipped, in line of battle and thirst-
ing for the sanguinary fray, before the future Con-
queror of the Rebellion had convinced himself that
any blood would be shed, or had systematised any
plan of counteracting the revolutionary agencies,
which were threatening his own and the nation's
life. So far, however, from regarding the hesitancy
of the President at the outset, to avow any radical
or even any methodized policy, of dealing with the
rebellion, as proof of imbecilit}'^, I accept it as conclu-
sive evidence of genuine greatness and strength.
He was ignorant of its implacable determination
like every other man guileless of complicity with it,
and a premature radical policy would have subjected
him instantly, to the reproach from a vast majority
of his countrymen, of stimulating an undeveloped

23

and embryo crime, which conciliation and caution
might strangle ; and any policy, while the insurrec-
tion was unorganized, would have clearly convicted
him of the ho ! low n ess and insincerity of the mere
pretender. It would have implied superhuman pre-
vision, sublime conceit, or arrant quackery. He was
about assuming the helm of Government, when the
tempest was abroad in its fury, when every headland
was buried in storm and darkness, when every Pha-
ros as well as the eternal lights of Heaven were
extinguished, when the needle was no longer true to
the pole, when all prognostics failed, when all charts
and tables of previous navigators were at fault, and
the laboring ship must be steered over the wide and
pathless ocean by conjecture alone. This was no
time for laying out her bearings and course for a
four years' voyage, and our wise and truthful Pilot,
avowing manfully his infirmity, in such an unparal-
leled tornado, and reverently invoking divine guid-
ance, prudently abstained, during that memorable
progress, from committing himself to any rigid and
inflexible theory, which would prevent him after-
wards, from adapting his measures to the growth and
development of the monstrous anomaly, and of justi-
fying his policy by its frighful vicissitudes and crime.
Nor is the language of his Inaugural much more
decisive. His temper and spirit towards it is most

24

forbearing and admirable. He is not yet authorized
to treat it as a maniac, and therefore addresses it as
a perverse but accountable creature. So far as the
Rebellion had evinced its character and intentions,
just so far his plan of dealing with it was therein
frankly and unmistakably announced. It undertook
to vindicate its revolutionary attitude, by pretending
to fear an unauthorized destruction of Slavery in the
States, and the new President, as in duty bound, in
his first official address disclaimed for himself and
his supporters any such purpose, both by a full and
pointed denial, and by ample citation of the antece-
dent and recorded declarations of the Republican
party and its Chief In prosecution of its purposes
the rebellion had already seized Forts, Navy Yards,
Custom Houses, Arsenals, and had prohibited the
collection of duties, and he calmly but decisively
declares, that " the power confided to him will be
used, to hold, occupy and possess the property
and places belonging to the Government, and to
collect the duties and imports." And that this
might not seem too threatening a declaration, he
adds the important qualification, that " beyond
what may be necessary for these objects, there
will be no invasion, no using of force against or
among the people anywhere." In deference to the
irritation which prevailed in the insurrectionary

25

States, he expressly foregoes the right of appointing
obnoxious strangers to Federal offices within their
limits, and promises that the mails shall be furnished
to all parts of the Union, until they are violently
repelled.

In this brief statement, I have condensed all the
foreshadowings of a policy, which this wise and
unfaltering President vouchsafed to the world, when
consciously entering upon the most perilous era of
our history, and assuming the most momentous
responsibilities. While we have in it but one sen-
tence, which even the over-sensitive chivalry could
construe into a menace, we are prodigally furnished
with. conciliatory promises, and with such winning
arguments and admonitions only, as a tender father
might employ with a wayward offspring. Up to the
time when he took the oath of office upon the east-
ern portico of the Capitol, he had pushed forbear-
ance beyond the point where it ceases to be a virtue,
and it is perfectly apparent that it had not yet
dawned upon him, that his hand was soon to wield
a scourge, terrible enough to chastise two God-defy-
ing centuries of crime, or that his chief mission to
this earth was to conduct a nation through the jaws
of death and the gates of hell, to regenerated and
immortal life.

Let me now attempt to ascertain, at what precise

26

period he abandoned this preconceived and cherished
idea of compromising the embroilment by a mere
warhke demonstration, and let me also attempt to
analyze the difficulties, which, a resolution in favor of
uncompromising and aggressive hostilities, encounters
from his conservative habits, from his peculiar emo-
tional and intellectual organization, and reproduce,
as far as I am able, the arguments, v^hich persuaded
his placable and scrupulous mind to the unhesitating
and implacable purpose of exercising all the tre-
mendous powers conferred upon him by the Rights
of War, and of grasping every weapon in its terrible
arsenal.

The Time, when this decided change in his pur-
pose first appears, was more than a month after our
flag was struck from Sumpter's crumbling battle-
ments, more than a month after that bugle blast
which summoned seventy-five thousand men to arms,
a month at least after the bloody baptism of Massa-
chusetts troops in the streets of Baltimore. We have
his own authentic manifestoes to demonstrate, that
as late as the first of May, 1861, he had not aban-
doned temporizing expedients, and we learn by
evidence equally conclusive, that before the month
had closed, he had finally resolved to turn upon the
inveterate Rebellion the unbridled wrath of War.
The hour, when doubt and hesitancy first yielded to

27

the stern command of remorseless duty, must have
beefi the soberest, saddest, solemnest of his faithful
life, not from doubt of the result, though that was
sufl&ciently perplexing ; not from fear of the conse.
quences, though these were appalling enough; not
from the weight of responsibility, though that might
have staggered the most unyielding determination,
but it was sad and solemn, because Abraham Lincoln,
above and beyond all other men, loved Peace and
hated War; because seiges, battles, strife, swords,
bayonets, rifles, cannon, all the paraphernalia and
instruments of brute force, were abhorrent to his
enlightened and benevolent nature. Shall we raise
the latch, and enter in to the secret chamber of that
capacious and genial soul, when this fell resolve was
first reached, when the frightful vision of War, in all
its terrors clad, supplants there the hope of concilia-
tion and the dream of peace ? I speak, what I heard
from his own lips when I say, that it was reached
after sleepless nights, after a severe conflict with
himself, and with extreme reluctance. By a strange
and cruel freak of fate, the duty of waging the
bloodiest war in history was imposed upon the most
peace loving and amiable ruler in all time, upon a
man whose maxim was (in the language of one of
his favorite texts,) "let the potsherd strive with the
potsherds of the Earth" — and into whose mind, had

28

been thoroughly ingrained that traditional notion of
our politics, that the first drop of blood, shed in a
sectional strife, was the death-knell of the American
Union,

Let us enter in, where that now disembodied spirit
was, in the recesses of its clay tenement, in stormy
debate with itself What throes, what agony do we
witness! What heart rending sobs, what heaven
piercing prayers that tlie cup may pass from his lips !
Here was that conservative mind, trained to habits of
professional caution, with the strongest bias towards
legality and moderation, which had uniformly steered
itself by the certain lights of jurisprudence, which
had invoked no remedies but the peaceful ones of
the Courts, the Constitution and the Law, which had
never combated Error but with reason and persua-
sion alone, and had abjured the ordeal of battle and
the arbitrament of force, as obsolete and heathenish
enormities. Here are all these mature, earnest opin-
ions and prepossessions, all dominant from fifty years
of undisputed sway, wrestling impotently with the
War ideas and the overmastering War Revelation of
yesterday. What an unwelcome intruder the con-
viction is to the serene virtues, which had hitherto
exclusively occupied this holy sanctuary. Domesti-
cated here are Justice and Mercy, ("and earthly
power is likest God's when Mercy seasons Justice.")

29

Justice and Mercy, which hold the balances quite
evenly, but the hair's weight which oscillates them,
uniformly found in Mercy's scale, and how repulsive
it is to these righteous and discriminating attributes,
to let loose upon the people a wild and furious
Avenger that devours alike innocence and guilt?
Here too dwell sensibilities and affections so acute,
that they fling wide open the doors of the soul to
every one who approaches in Misfortune's name,
grant the prayer of Sorrow before it is half uttered,
and which the small inarticulate wail of infancy
instantly melts into tears of most compassionate ten-
derness; how are these sensitive fibers wrung and
tortured Avhen it suddenly flashes upon them, that
the loving hand which has only learned to soothe
and relieve the miserable, is commissioned by inex-
orable fate, to break the fourth seal of the Apoca-
lypse, and, '• behold a pale horse ! and his name who
sat on him was Death and Hell followed him; and
power was given unto them over the fourth part of
the earth, to kill with the sword and with hunger
and with Death and with the beasts of the earth."
Movelessly, movelessly rooted also in this great heart,
is a superfine sense of humor, craving hilarity and
harmless mirth, and joy-inspiring wit and anecdote,
as the only effectual relief to an over -anxious spirit
and an over-tasked brain, and how reluctantly does

30

this part of his nature admit to close companionship,
the gloomy forebodings, the bitter memories, the
dreadful uncertainties, the everlasting shrieks, dirges,
vengeful tragedies, and heart-rending atrocities of
War.

In addition to the protest of these conservative
habits, and amiable emotions, upon his adoption of
any radical and thorough-going policy of grappling
with the Rebellion, he was also, like many others,
held back for a season, by the legal scruples which
his reflecting faculties were constantly suggesting.
*' Beset," as it has been well said, "by fanatics of prin-
ciple, on one side, who would give no heed to the
limitations of his written authority, and by fanatics
of party, on the other, who were not only deaf to the
obligations of justice, but would hear of no policy
large enough for a revolutionary emergency, Mr.
Lincoln never forgot, for an instant, that he was a
constitutional ruler." The Constitution of the United
States which it takes but twenty minutes to read, can
be studied for twice twenty years, without exhaust-
ing its meaning, or comprehending its vast treasury
of express and implied power. Like most of our
statesmen the attention of the President, had been
exclusively turned to the Peace side of the instru-
ment, to the provisions which address themselves to
conditions of unbroken amity, domestic tranquility.

31

to the preservatiorl of amicable relations between the
States, and to the development, under their auspices,
of commerce, industry, manufactures and trade.
The powers it grants over internal improvements,
over foreign and inter-State commerce, currency,
duties and imposts, territories, naturalization, taxation,
bankruptcy, as well as the extent of constitutional
limitations upon the General Government, and of
constitutional prohibitions upon the States, have not
only been subjects of constant individual study, but
have been illustrated and defined, by a long, lumin-
ous and comprehensive series of judicial determina-
tions, which have the same authority and validity as
if they were incorporated into the Constitution itself
We can all see, at a glance, how greatly these inves-
tigations and decisions have contributed to consoli-
date the Union and to enlarge and strengthen the
influence of the National government. But Courts
and individuals have alike ignored the War side of
the Constitution, or drawn but feebly upon that
slumbering element in our system, which holds each
revolving planet in complete subjection to the sun.

What are its powers over States which abjure
allegiance, and conspire together for its destruction
and overthrow, and raise armies, and wage War
against it, was, fortunately, a question which no
judicial tribunal had been called upon to adjudi-

32

cate, which no curious theorizer had even mooted^
and which Mr. Lincoln himself for the first time
investigated in the third month of his administration
— that parturiant and groaning May. He then con-
centrated his attention upon the War powers of our
organic law, and found in this terra incognita., unex-
pected resources which never yet had contributed
to the weight, and vigor, and terror of the Federal
arm. The elements of strength and power which
were hid away, in the weighty clauses, which give
to the President and Congress the issues of Peace
and War, were dragged to light and employed for
the salvation of the Republic.

By the middle of May the doubt and haze which
had settled upon the legal relation of the Insurgent
States to the Government, began to disappear. On
the sixth of that month, the Confederate Congress
at Montgomery, declared war against the United
States, and Mr. Lincoln's position, at this time,
towards the gigantic peril which threatened our
national existence, was described with legal exact-
ness and accuracy, when it was said to him by an
eminent civilian — "If the whole unvarnished truth
is told you, sir, you are confronted by a de facto
Rebellion, and a de facto War, and you are justified
in treating it as the one, as the other, and as both."
With equal truth it was shortly afterwards said, in
the United States Senate, " it is a Rebellion swollen

33

to the proportions of a War, and it is a War deriving
its life from Rebellion. It is no less of a Rebellion
because of its full blown grandeur, nor is it less a
War because of the traitorous source from whence
it draws its life." What are my constitutional
resources against this new, strange, and double
headed monster ? was the first question which Mr.
Lincoln put to himself, and this question, grave,
severe, and momentous as was ever submitted to
human arbitrament, he w^as called upon, without
precedent, without authority, and from his habits of
mind without assistance, forthwith to determine by
his peculiar process of divination.

The Constitution, does it not? establishes in law
and in fact, an independent government. By that
act alone, all the belligerent rights, which from time
immemorial, by international law belong to inde-
pendent governments, were instantly conveyed to
the new born nation. Yes, yes, they were all ours
by the title which secured us a place in the family
of nations. In abeyance during peace, they instantly
vest with the first act of War, and with full grown
vehemence and power surrender themselves to
execute our behests, against all of our public ene-
mies whether they rally under the bastard banner of
an Insurgent State, or the legitimate flag of a
recognized nation.

34

But not only did Mr. Lincoln find full belligerent
rights, according to the laws and usages of nations,
and against all armed foes, implied in the independ-
ent government which the Constitution creates and
endows with the powers of self-defence, but he found,
also, that they all directly and necessarily flow from
the express provisions of the instrument. What is
War ? oh doubting Didymus ! According to the
books, it is "contention by force for the purpose of par-
alyzing an enemy." Congress has power, has it not?
" to declare war," and what is this but lifting the
gate and opening the sluiceway which sets in motion
all the legitimate machinery which is required to
paralyze an enemy? Congress has power, has it
not ? " to grant letters of marque and reprisal "; and
what is this but commissioning two of the peculiar
agencies of war, to follow the property of the enemy
wherever it flees, for the purpose of punishing and
impoverishing him. Congress lias power "^ to make
rules concerning captures on land and water," and
what is this but providing directly for the exercise
of seizure, forfeiture, contribution, confiscation, liber-
ation. In the power conferred upon Congress, " to
raise and support armies," "to provide and maintain
a navy," " to make rules for the government of the
land and naval forces," "to provide for the calling
fortli of the militia, to execute the laws of the Union,

suppress insurrection and repel invasions," and, in
the clinching and decisive clause which empowers it
" to make all laws necessary and proper" for carry-
ing these enumerated powers into execution, he
found plenar}^ authority for employing, in its ex-
tremest rigor, every right of war against rebels in
arms.

Turning away then, from the pages of the Consti-
tution which confer belligerent rigMs, he reperused the
article which deals with Rebellion as a crime, and
provides for it a criminal punishment, to be enforced
in the Courts, by the peaceful processes of the munici-
pal law; and he finds that levying war against the
United States and adhering to their enemies is trea-
son, and is liable to all the pains, penalties and for-
feitures which are v^isited upon that crime.

From this long review, Mr. Lincoln rose with the
conviction, that for the overthrow of the rebels he
might draw upon two fountains, and a double source
of power, ihe Constitution and the rights of ivar ; that
as criminals he might pursue them by the slow and
guarded processes of the first, but that as enemies, he
could wither them with all the dread agencies and
summary vengeance of the last, and he rose, too,
with the full determination from which he never
afterwards deflected, to draw upon both magazines,
to fight from both batteries, and with all their thunder.

36

The powers thus claimed, are all indubitably con-
ferred, and may be all unquestionably used, unless
in behalf of rebels in arms, you urge the preposter-
ous plea that they are not enemies because they are
traitors, thereby constituting broken faith, violated
oaths, and avowed treason, titles to immunity
from the penalties of war, and thus disfranchise an
independent nation of every belligerent right against
those foes, who have once owed it allegiance, and to
the guilt of treason have added that of unjust war.
If, in addition to the considerations I have urged
in favor of these positions, time would permit me to
cite the judgments of the Supreme Court, I could
present precise points, raised in admiralty appeals,
and ruled by such judges as Marshall, Livingstone,
Tilghman, Taney, Grier and Nelson, which establish
the principle, that the United States engaged in sup-
pressing an insurrection of its citizens, may with
entire consistency treat them as criminals, as enernies,
and as both, and may, with equal consistency, also
act in the two-fold capacity of sovereign and helligerent,
according to the several measures resorted to for the
accomplishment of its purpose. By inflicting, through
its agent the Judiciary, the penalty which the law
affixes to the capital crimes of treason and piracy, it
treats them as criminals, and acts in its capacity as a
sovereign, and its courts are but enforcing its municipal

37

regulations. By instituting a blockade of the ports
of its rebellious citizens, invading their territory,
sequestrating their property, and emancipating their
slaves, the Government treats them, as enemies, and
exercises its rights as a htlligerenty and its courts, in
their adjudication upon capture, seizures, and forfeit-
ures, are organized as courts of prize, under the law
of nations.^

I have dwelt longer, than may be deemed judi-
cious by some, upon the process by which Abraham
Lincoln's mind was gradually led, from vague and
undefined notions, to defined and accurate views of
the relations of the armed insurgent to the Federal
Government, because it lies at the very root of his
Administration of the War, because it vindicates his
Constitutional fidelity, because, just as the future
forest once lay in the acorn's cup, just as the full
grown Rebellion once lay, in the pestilent heresy of
Calhoun, just so clearly and conspicuously its inevit-
able death lay, in the fundamental and germinant
idea, that as criminals they were subject to all the
penalties of the Constitution, and as enemies to all the
legal consequences of War.

In that classic drama, which first revealed to the
world the masterly genius of Talford, unhappy Ion

* Upton's Maritime Warfare and Prize, p. 212.

38

proceeds upon the task, to which he was called by
the audible voice of the gods, with a firm hand and
unfaltering will, but with supreme pity and tender-
ness towards the father he was doomed to slay.
With as compassionate a heart, with as complete
exemption from all vengeful passions, but with as
unswerving and constant a determination, this gentle
President now dedicates his arm to the destruction of
the Rebellion. And from this time forward all vas-
cillation, compunction, and even debate, apparently
disappear from his mind, as if he had accepted and
surrendered himself to a vengeful destiny, or as if he
regarded himself as the mere instrument of working
out a great cause, which he was constrained to recog-
nize, but powerless to control. Forthwith, rise like
exhalations that impregnable cordon of earthworks
in which Washington has securely reposed, forthwith
the guns of Fort McHenry, and the broadside of a
man of war admonish the Plug Uglies of Baltimore,
that the main thoroughfare to the Capital must here-
after be inviolate, forthwith the Ohio contingent is
ordered to sweep every hostile banner from the
mountain fastnesses of West Virginia, forthwith But-
ler, from Fortress Monroe, hurls a forlorn hope against
the counterscarps of Big Bethel, forthwith the tented
villages disappear, like snow flakes, from the sur-
rounding fields of the Metropolis, and the rumbling

39

of artillery waggons upon every bridge, and the long
lines of glittering bayonets which reflect the waters
of the Potomac, proclaim that the Rubicon is passed,
and the sacred soil invaded, forthwith, in his first
message, he informs Congress, that " he has invoked
the War power," and calls for four hundred thousand
men and four hundred millions of dollars, that "the
conflict may be short and decisive," and when it
passes the Non-Intercourse Act, the Confiscation Act,
the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus, they are forth-
with approved, for in determining that the Govern-
ment was endowed, in time of War, with unabridged
belligerent rights, he had settled a principle which
underlies all these controverted measures.

In the seven months which follow, he evinces an
administrative vigor that would have satisfied Napo-
leon the Great, but it was all alas ! counteracted, by
a military imbecility in his Generals that was fairly
sublime. It is the era of almost unrelieved disaster,
commencing with the ineffaceable disgrace of Bull
Run and terminating only with the capture of Fort
Donelson, which first introduced to the country an
immortal name, and initiated a career which has
steadily marched on from victory to victory, and
from Alp to Alp, up to the crowning summit of mili-
tary grandeur, where Ulysses S. Grant now stands
unchallenged and secure.

40

How nobly the President bore himself, during this
interval of darkness that could be felt, when bold
men trembled at every click of the telegraph, let
two tributes offered by unfriendly voices to his Stoi-
cism attest : the first, is from no less a master of it
than Napoleon the Third, who epigramatically says :
"Mr. Lincoln's highest claim upon my admiration, is
a Roman equanimity, which has been tried by both
extremes of fortune and disturbed by neither;" the
second, is from a hostile Englishman who says, that
"tried by years of failure, without achieving one
great success, he not only never yielded to despond-
ency or anger, but what is most marvellous, con-
tinually grew in self-possession and magnanimity."
I once myself ventured to ask the President, if he
had ever despaired of the country ? and he told me,
that "when the Peninsular Campaign terminated
suddenly at Harrison's Landing, I was as nearly
inconsolable as I could be and live." In the same
connection I inquired, if there had ever been a
period in which he thought that better management,
upon the part of his Commanding General, might
have terminated the War? and he answered that
there were three, that the first was at Malvern Hill,
where McClellan failed to command an immediate
advance upon Richmond, that the second was at
Chancellorville, where Hooker failed to reinforce

41

Sedgwick, after hearing his cannon upon the extreme
right, and that the third was after Lee's retreat from
Gettysburg, when Meade failed to attack him in the
bend of the Potomac. After this commentary I
waited for an outburst of denunciation, for a criti-
cism at least upon the delinquent officers, but I
waited in vain; so far from a word of censure
escaping his lips, he soon added, that his first remark
might not appear uncharitable, "I do not know that
I could have given different orders had I been with
them myself; I have not fully made up my mind
how I should behave, when miunie balls were whist-
ling and these great oblong shells shrieking in my
ear. I might run away." The interview, which I
am recalling, was last summer, just after Gen. Fre-
mont had declined to run against him for the Presi-
dency. The magnificent Bible, which the negroes
of Washington had just presented him, lay upon the
table, and while we were both examining it, I recited
the somewhat remarkable passage from the Chroni-
cles; "Eastward were six Levites, northward four a
day, southward four a day and towards Assuppim
two and two, at Parbar westward, four at the cause-
way and two at Parbar." He immediately chal-
lenged me to find any such passage as that in his
Bible, After I had pointed it out to him, and he
was satisfied of its genuineness, he asked me if I

42

remembered the text which his friends had recently
applied to Fremont, and instantly turned to a verse
in the first of Samuel, put on his spectacles, and read
in his slow, peculiar and waggish tone, — "And every
one that was in distress, and every one that was in
debt, and every one that was discontented gathered
themselves unto him; and he became a Captain over
them : and there were with him about four hundred
men." I am here reminded of an impressive remark,
which he made to me upon another occasion and
which I shall never forget. He said, he had never
united himself to any church, because he found diffi-
culty in giving his assent, without mental reserva-
tion, to the long complicated statements of Christian
doctrine, whicli characterize their Articles of belief
and Confessions of Faith. " When any church," he
continued, "will inscribe over its altar, as its sole
qualification for membership the Saviour's condensed
statement of the substance of both law and Gospel,
'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind,
and thy neighbor as thyself,' that church will I join
with all my heart and all my soul." The books
which he chiefly read, in his leisure hours were, the
Bible, Shakspeare, the peasant poet of Scotland, with
whom his sympathies were very acute, and those
peculiar off-shoots of American wit, of which Orpheus

43

C. Kerr, Artemas Ward, and Doesticks are types.
I frequently saw all these books in his hands, during
a voyage of three days upon the Potomac, when the
party consisted only of the President and his family,
the Secretary of War and his aid and myself

The ten months which divide the fall of Fort
Donelson, (February 16th, 1862,) from the battle of
Fredericksburg, (December 13th, 1862,) constitute
the depressing era of military uncertainty. Admin-
istrative ability, executive resolution and hardihood,
were never more impressively displayed than during
this disheartening period, but in spite of it, incon-
stant victory seems to vibrate between the hostile
banners.

The encouraging results of luka and Corinth, and
the opening of the Upper Mississippi, inspire the
national heart with new confidence in the jjrotection
of Heaven and in the heroism of our western sol-
diers. Brave old Farragut earns the grade of Admi-
ral, and the soubriquet of Salamander, by leading
his thundering Armada, through the feu d' enfer,
which belched from Fort Phillip on the right, and
Fort Jackson on the left, and the martial and financial
heart of rebellion in the Southwest, is palsied when
the guns of his fleet sweep the streets of New
Orleans, and the Tamer of Cities hangs up its scalp
in his wigwam. War surges and resurges over the

44

devoted plains of Missouri and Arkansas. The Pen-
insula Campaign, with its chequered fortunes, alter-
nately excites exultation and wailing, but its
final failure plants in the National heart the seeds of
despair, while the whirlwind which devours the army
of Pope, constrains us to doubt the justice of God.
The victories of South Mountain and Antietam,
fairly costing their weight in gore, and turning to
ashes in our grasp, failed to reanimate our hopes,
while Pittsburg Landing and Shiloh, are more than
counterpoised by the heart rending butchery of
Fredericksburg.

The progress of Mr. Lincoln's mind from his plan
of colonizing the slave, and after that was abandoned,
to compensated liberation, and from this expedient
to unconditional emancipation, is analogous to the
deliberate advance, which I have already detailed,
from a conservative to a thorough going policy, in
the prosecution of the war. Unlike the first, how-
ever, in these last ^transitions he meets with no
resistence from the philanthropies of his nature, but
encouraged and stimulated by the complete accord
of emotion and reason. To be self-willed in a revo-
lutionary crisis, and to exclaim "Justice shall be
omnipotent though the Heavens fall," are unques-
tionably sublime manifestations, but in such immi-
nent peril, it is rather the sublimity of madness than

45

of wisdom. I can not withhold my tribute of grati-
tude and admiration, to the caution and address,
with which Mr. Lincoln has felt his way, timeing his
march to the beat of the popidar heart, and answer-
ing no requisitions of the popular will until it was
thoroughly mature and unmistakably pronounced.
He had settled the principle upon which emancipa-
tion is defended, and was unquestionably ripe for it
himself, when he first resolved to exercise the bellig-
erent rights which belonged to the Government, in
time of war, but he was deterred from exercising
the right of liberation, from the apprehension of a
counter revolution in the North, and that his fears
were not entirely groundless, that remarkable polit-
ical revulsion, in the fall elections which immediately
follow his preliminary proclamation, abundantly
demonstrates. When, however, his convictions of
the justice of emancipation were enforced, by the
logic of continued failure, and by the incisive rea-
soning of the enemy's unyielding sword, he was led
up, in spite of his fears, to the height of that trans-
cendent Edict, which constitutes his strongest claim
upon universal and unending gratitude and remem-
brance. He assumed the Presidential chair, with a
solemn disavowal of any constitutional right to inter-
fere with slavery in the States, and if they had con-
tinued faithful to the Constitution, their cherished

46

barbarity, condemned as it was by all his moral
instincts, would have been safe in the inviolable
sanctity of his oath. But when they appealed to
War, and voluntarily renounced the safeguards of
the Constitution, they instantly handed over the
abhorrence of civilization to uncovenanted mercy,
and disengaged two belligerent rights, one of which
is fatal to it, if slaves are chuUels, and the other fatal
if slaves are mpn. By the most meliorated construc-
tion of the international code, the private property
of an enemy on the land is still liable to capture,
under circumstances constituting a vecessity, of which
the conqueror is the sole judge ; while the old and
austere authority of Vattel establishes the indisputa-
ble right in one belligerent, to break the chains of
any oppressed people which the other belligerent is
depriving of liberty, for the purpose of completing
and ennobling victory. Of these weapons, Mr. Lin-
coln chose the first, which is called military neces-
sity. The conditional proclamation was for some
time postponed, awaiting the impending engagement
in Maryland, and was finally promulged only five
days after Antietam. Mr. Lincoln required that the
military urgency upon which it was based, should
not only be plausible, but real and imperious, and
it is now well understood that if victory had perched
more signally on our banners, and Lee's army had

47

been more thoroughly crippled and demoralized in
that battle, the proclamation which restores to mil-
lions of living men, and to unborn generations, the
rights of manhood, would have been postponed to
an indefinite future.

Are we not here able to interpret and explain one
of those purposes which are sometimes called mys-
terious and inscrutable ? I can almost see a mighty
arm, stretching out of the unfathomable blue, hasten-
ing the fugitive in his flight, holding back the feet
of the pursuer, and arresting the waves of destruc-
tion which are pouring upon the dismayed and
broken ranks, that the abyss which is yawning for
the mightiest of slavery's hosts, may not swallow up
the elect of liberty and the redemption of a long
suffering race. Assembled here, to-day, to devoutly
recognize that Prov idence, • which guided the great
liberator, "by ways which he knew not and by paths
which were not known," may we not all of us, with-
out a discordant voice, and with the hope that his own
ransomed spirit is not unconscious of the oblation,
unite in the invocation which closes the imperisha-
ble manifesto, " Upon this act, believed to be an act

OF JUSTICE warranted BY THE CONSTITUTION UPON MILI-
TARY NECESSITY, I INVOKE THE CONSIDERATE JUDGMENT OF
MANKIND AND THE GRACIOUS FAVOR OF AlMIGHTY GoD."

The definitive proclamation of emancipation was

48

promulged on the first of January, 1863, and it
seems instantly to have been visited with that " gra-
cious favor" which it so reverently implores. From
that eventful date Federal ascendency flows surely
and steadily on to the capture of Richmond and the
surrender of Lee. Reverses and checks, it is true,
intervene, but they are only eddies in the Amazon.
During these twenty-seven controlling months of the
war, into which more general engagements were
crowded, than into any equal period of the world's
history, the loss of but one, attests the advent of
higher inspiration and divine re-enforcement to our
struggling cause. The ink with which the procla-
mation is written is scarcely dry upon the parch-
ment, before the decisive victory of Murfreesboro
expels invasion from imperiled Tennessee. On
the nation's birthday which next follows it, pro-
pitious heaven almost visibly intervened, by break-
ing the last barrier which prevents the loyal father
of waters, from flowing free and unobstructed
through the divided rebellion; and by sweeping
back, from the bristling hills of Gettysburg, the
army of the alien on its last desperate raid into the
bosom of the North. Away up in mid air, on the
cloud capped crests of the south-eastern Alleghanies,
there is the roar and lurid flame of battle, as if the
pent up fires of the cavernous earth were bursting

49

from their thunder-riven summits, while down, down
in the deep valley, it seems as if the elements of
nature were battering chasms and pathways through
their granite foundations. The gates of Georgia
yield to the flushed battalions of the Cumberland,
and from the Altamaha to the Cape Fear, three
great states of the Confederacy soon " feel the vic-
tor's tread and know the conquered knee." Hood is
hurled, by his infatuated Chieftain, against the bat-
tlements of Nashville only to be dashed back broken
and destroyed. The vale of the Shenandoah is
swept by the besom, and scourged by the wrath of
Sheridan. Over the forest which sweeps from the
Eapidan to the James, there hangs, in early Spring
time, a dark and portentous cloud ; the Wilderness
is red as if imtimely Autumn had purpled its foliage.
We dimly hear, far in its resounding depths, that
awe-inspiring roll, that sharp suggestive rattle which
forewarns and terrifies nations, and ever and anon a
woe-begone messenger, such as

" Drew Priam's curtain at the dead of niglit
And told him half his Troy was burned" —

breaks from the sequestered thicket, with a tantali-
zing tale, of the fierce, sanguinary, but indecisive
shock and recoil of embattled hosts. What weeks of
heart-rending suspense ! But finally, from the Sat-
urnalia of death and butchery long rampant in its
4

50

sombre and haunted recesses, he of the iron will and
inflexible tenacity, at le^ngth emerges in the resplen-
dent robes of Victory, and day after day for persist-
ent months, unmoved by clamor, undismayed by
failure, unwearied by resistance, slowly tightens an
irresistible coil, round the wailing Capital of sin,
until flint and gasping, it falls into the arms of a
negro brigade. City after city, harbor after harbor
succumbs. The coast is hermetically sealed from
Norfolk to Galveston, and the magazines and arsenals
of England and France no longer pour their strength-
ening tides into the decaying veins of the worn out
Confederacy. Sheridan rolls up the Confederate
right like a scroll and hangs on its flying flank with
the scent of a hound and the snap of a terrier. Lee
surreaders his decimated horde, and over the old
endeared, precious inheritance from the Rappahan-
nock to the Sabine, up flies the banner, down droops
the rag.

Abraham Lincoln's work was finished, when unher-
alded and almost unattended, leading his little son
by the hand, he walks into the streets of humiliated
Richmond. If upon that auspicious morn, the crown-
ing benediction had descended upon him, he might
have well wished to die. What more could he ask
for on earth ? Assailed by the strongest conspiracy

51

that ever threatened a nation's life, after a four years'
struggle, his triumph over it was complete and over-
whelming, conquering liberty for a class and national
existence for a people. Was not this honor enough
for one man ? He had survived ridicule, he had out-
lived detraction and abuse, he had secured the com-
mendation of the world for purity of purpose, con-
stancy in disaster, clemency in triumph, and the
praise even of his armed foes, for gentleness and
mercy. In times more troubled, he had administered
Government with more ability than Cavour, and War
with more success than Napoleon the Third. He
had paled the glory of Hastings in preserving an
empire, and had earned comparison with Hampden
for self-command and rectitude of intention, while as
the emancipator of a race, he stood alone in solitary
glory, without a rival and without a parallel. If
fame had approached him with the laurels of a con-
queror, if power had offered him a sceptre, and
ambition a crown, he would have scorned them all.
He asked from man, he asked^ from God but one
culminating boon, peace, peace on the bloody waters
and the blighted shore.

Alas! such an enviable consummation to his career
was denied. There are mysterious conferences of
suspicious and guilt-laden men, ominous Sittings of a
bat-like flock from Washington to Richmond, and

52

from Eichmond to Canada, midniglit interviews, lurk-
ing spies, correspondence in cypher; a conspiracy
against his life has long been maturing, in minds
capable of such things, and finally the day is named,
the place is appointed, and the parts of the bloody
drama all distributed. On the evening of the 14th
of April, 1865, at Ford's theatre in the City of Wash-
ington, the trigger of a pistol is pulled by a sneaking
murderer who had crept up behind him all unwarned^
and the report resounds through the startled assem-
bly. From the private box which the President was
known to occupy, an excited wretch, with a . swart
visage torn and convulsed by every passion, leaps
upon the stage where he had last played the blood-
thirsty Apostate, and brandishing a dagger in his
outstretched hand, and exclaiming " sic semper tyran-
nis," vanished into night and darkness, leaving behind
him horror, terror and woe. The nation stands
aghast ! the crime of the Dark Ages has entered our
History — stealthy assassination has broken the sacred
succession of the people's anointed — the life of the
best beloved of Presidents is oozing from a murder-
ous wound — the soul of Abraham Lincoln is trans-
ferred from Earth to Heaven.

Whether the Confederate Government is legally
guilty of Mr. Lincoln's murder, is a question yet to
be determined, but of one thing we are sure, that

.

53

no crime is too bad, too bold, too infamous, too exe-
crable, for that state of society which was willing to
unchain the fiends of war, to incarnadine sea and
land, to immolate a Republic that is to the victims
of misgovernment the only pledge of ransom, and
to the victimizer the only warrant of retribution, to
bore into Pandemonium itself and surge this conse-
crated earth with its sulphurous seas of flame, that
it might continue to batten forever on slavery, and
perj)etuate eternally "such abominations as are
buried under the waters of the Dead Sea." Assas-
sination belongs to the same ruffian family of crime
in which that society exulted previous to the war, and
to the same degr&e of infernal turpitude with those
which it had encouraged and applauded, during its
prosecution. Without compunction or hesitation, it
could coolly plot to pile hecatomb upon hecatomb of
victims, infancy and age, guilt and innocence, in one
smouldering heap, by the midnight conflagration of
our crowded metropolis. It could stealthily conduct
the infection of a devouring pestilence, as electricity
by the wires, into the healthy atmosphere of the
North, that all who breathed it might die. It could
deliberately compose the fiendish plan, and day after
day, hour after hour, composedly weigh and measure
out to helpless prisoners, the precise ration which
was sure to produce their slow starvation. What a

54

burlesque to see such a society shrink back affrighted
and horror struck, at shooting one AboUtionist in
the head and stabbing another in the heart ! In the
name of Christianity it justifies Human Bondage, in
the name of the Constitution it justifies its over-
throw, in the name of Chivahy it justifies the
Bloodhound and the Barracoon, why not in the
name of Patriotism justify Assassination, and ap-
prove and ratify the hired murderer's Ij^ing epi-
taph upon himself when with the price of blood in
his pocket he says, "tell my mother I died for my
country." Wliat a record of lawlessness and infamy
has slavery written for itself from Mr. Lincoln's elec-
tion to his death ! Appealing to the Ballot, it
abjures the verdict of the people, appealing to Pub-
lic Opinion, it defies the decree of the civilized world,
appealing to Arms, it tramples on the Code of War
and summons Starvation, the Torch, and the Plague,
to aid the impotency of its sword. Too wicked to
live in peace, too weak to succeed in war, too enraged
to accept defeat, too corrupt to die with honor, too
putrid to rise again, it gathers up its expiring strength
to strike an assassin's blow that it might die as it had
lived, violating every law, human and divine, and
accursed by God and man.

"Useless, useless," said the dying Thug, as his
shrieking ghost fled from the angry earth to the

55

vengeful skies. Yes, yes, crime always fails in its
purpose, assassination is everlastingly a blunder.
Caasar is assassinated, and imperial sway emerges in
full armed despotism from his tomb — Henry the
Fourth is assassinated, but the edict of Nantes sur-
vives for nearly a century the dagger of Ravaillac,
and religious toleration is invigorated by its blow —
William the Silent is assassinated, but the republic of
the Netherlands breaks the double fetters of super-
stition and tj'ranny, and expands into a great and
Hourishino; commonwealth — Buckino-ham is assassin-
ated, but Protestant Rochelle is soon delivered up to
the vengeance of Richelieu — Capo D'Istria is assas-
sinated, but the European dynasties control the
policy and elect the kings of Greece — Lincoln is
assassinated, but the branded confederacy cowers
beneath the maledictions of the civilized world, and
onward, onward,,roll the mighty wheels of victory
and vengeance. "Useless," and didst thou dream,
impious malefactor, that it was in the power of thy
puny arm to reach the great life of our virtuous
DELIVERER ? He livcs ! he lives ! he lives to-day, in
his imperishable example, in his recorded words of
w^isdom, in his great maxims of liberty and enfran-
chisement. The good never die ; to them belongs a
double immortality, they perish not upon the earth,
and they exist forever in heaven. The good of the

56

present live in the future, as the good of the past are
here with us and in us to-day. The great primeval
law-giver, entombed for forty centuries in that un-
known grave, in an obscure vale of Moab, to-day
legislates in your halls of State, and preaches on
your Sabbath in all your synagogues. Salem's royal
singer indites our liturgies and leads our worship.
Socrates questions Atheists in these streets. Phidias
sculptures the friezes of Christian temples — the
desecrated tongue of mangled Tully arraigns our
Catalines — against the Philip of to-day the dead
Demosthenes thunders — the dead Leonidas guards
the gates of every empire which wrestles for its
sovereignty — the dead Justinian issues in your courts
the living mandates of the law — the dead Martin
Luther issues from your press the living oracles of
God — the dead Napoleon still sways France from
that silent throne in the Invalides — the dead George
Washington held together through wrangling decades
this brotherhood of States, and the dead Abraham
Lincoln will peal the clarion of beleaguered nations
and marshal and beckon on the wavering battle line
of liberty, till the last generation of man —

" Shall creation's death behold
As Adam saw her prime."

His fame will grow brighter and grander, as it
descends the ages, and posterity will regard him as

57

the incarnation of democracy, in its pure childhood,
as the embodiment of those ideas of universal eman-
cipation, which were the glory of its youthful epoch.
In remote futurity, as fir removed from us as we are
from the Chaldeans, when the massive walls of our
Capitol shall no more exist than the palace of Neb-
uchadnezzar, and all that is mortal in our civiliza-
tion and polity shall live only in memory, and when
the ingenuous child, gazing adown the dark infinity
of time, will be obliged to ask "whete is the nine-
teenth century ?" " There, there," the sage will reply
" where you see that full orbed and splendid Hesperus
of the West." When the race shall have finally
climbed to the lofty table land of universal brother-
hood, to which it is inevitably destined by the para-
mount law of its own development, and shall turn
backward its wistful eyes for those who have led its
weary pilgrimage, through passes the most perilous?
and over wastes the most disheartening, they w^ill
instinctively seek the uncourtly figure of that forest
born liberator, who, by one glorious edict restored to
humanity all the divine equalities enfeoffed upon it,
when of one blood all the children of men were
made, and thus incorporated into harmonious frater-
nity all the estranged and repellant complexions of
mankind. With reverent and grateful hearts they

will pour their choicest frankincense at the feet,
5

58

crown with unfading amaranth the brow, and by
eulogy, statue, column and obelisk, and every aid to
enduring remembrance, transmit to new and ever
rising futurities, the irradiated name of the first
President of the regenerated Republic, that Martyr
to Liberty and Law, whom, on this shore and border
of Time's immensity we deplore to-day, Abraham
Lincoln of Illinois.